Weedwolf
board games | Opus 4.8
Sarah cuts the gummies behind the open cabinet door, four identical squares, same color, same dusting of sugar, and writes the assignments on a folded index card she slides under the fruit bowl. One is five milligrams. One is ten. One is twenty-five. One is sugar and gelatin and nothing.
“They’re all the same,” she says, setting a square in front of each of them. “At the end, you write down your guess on who took what. One victory point for every dose you call right.”
“What’s the scoring rules?” Marcus asks. He has already eaten his and is shuffling the development cards with the speed of a man establishing an alibi.
“Normal Catan rules, plus most correct calls. Match the person to the milligrams.”
Elena eats it. “Fine. Set the board.”
Aris chews thoughtfully, the way he does everything. “I think the interesting question, no, the real question, is whether we can even tell from the inside. Whether the self-report tracks the, the actual state.”
“Eat your candy, professor,” Marcus says.
Forty minutes in, Catan is going badly for everyone in different ways.
Marcus is performing impairment with the dedication of a community theater lead. He drops a road piece, says “whoa,” and tracks it across the table like it owes him money. “Guys. Guys. The little wood guys are so small. Has anyone clocked how small these are?”
“You’re sober,” Elena says flatly. She has not moved a piece in four minutes. She is staring at the longest-road card as though it has insulted her family. “You’re sober and you’re doing a bit.”
“What’s your read on me, then?” Marcus leans back, delighted.
Elena’s mouth opens. Closes. She looks at her hand of resource cards and appears not to recognize them as her own. “How many sheep do I have? Why do I have this much sheep?”
Aris has begun building exclusively toward the desert. He places a settlement on a tile that produces nothing, sits back, and regards it with quiet satisfaction. “I think there’s a kind of honesty to the desert,” he says. “It doesn’t pretend. It’s the only tile that, that tells you the truth about scarcity.”
“That’s twenty-five milligrams of honesty,” Marcus says.
“I only had the one!” Aris says, wounded.
Sarah watches them and says nothing. She rolls a seven, moves the robber, and apologizes to the table at large. Marcus narrates her every motion in a hushed voice as if calling a nature documentary. Elena writes a number on her palm in pen, studies it, and crosses it out.
“I’m building the road,” Sarah says.
“She’s building the road,” Marcus whispers. “Look at her go.”
Sarah places the tenth segment and the longest road flips to her and the game ends, ten points, just like that, mid-sentence.
“Cards down,” she says. “Write who you think took what.”
The pens come out. Aris writes slowly, tongue between his teeth. Elena writes, scratches out, writes again, and guards her paper with a forearm. Marcus fills his in with a flourish and turns it face down before anyone can accuse him of cheating, which no one was going to do.
“Reveal,” Sarah says, and unfolds the card from under the bowl.
There is a silence while four people read four lines of her handwriting.
“These are all zero,” Elena says.
“They are.”
“You gave us all the placebo.”
“I did.”
Marcus stares at his road piece, then at Aris, who built a settlement in the desert and defended its honesty. Aris stares back. Elena puts her face in her hands and her shoulders start going, and the pen rolls off the table, and then all four of them are laughing, the kind that feeds itself, the kind where nobody can stop because everybody else won’t.